32.
When the ambassadors reported this to the Achaeans, with the approval of all the cities which were represented at that council, war was declared upon the Lacedaemonians.
[2]
Winter1 prevented the immediate prosecution of the war; nevertheless, their territories were devastated by small raids, more like brigandage than war, not [p. 107]only on land but also by ships from the sea.
[3]
This2 disturbance brought the consul to the Peloponnesus; and by his order a council was called at Elis and the Lacedaemonians summoned to take part in the debate.
[4]
Not only a lively debate took place there but also a violent quarrel, to which the consul, although in other respects, favouring both sides in a spirit of conciliation, he had given ambiguous replies, put an end by the one peremptory demand that they should refrain from war until they had sent ambassadors to the senate in Rome. Both sides sent embassies to Rome.
[5]
The Lacedaemonian exiles also entrusted their case and their representation to the Achaeans.
[6]
Diophanes and Lycortas, both from Megalopolis, were chiefs of the Achaean delegation, and they, opposed as they were to one another on public questions generally, at this time also delivered speeches quite inconsistent with one another.
[7]
Diophanes was for entrusting to the senate the adjudication of all questions: they, he said, would best settle the disputes between the Achaeans and the Lacedaemonians;
[8]
Lycortas, acting on the instructions of Philopoemen, demanded that the Achaeans be permitted to carry out whatever they had decreed in accordance with the treaty and their own laws, and that the Romans should grant them, unabridged, the freedom of which they themselves were the source.
[9]
The people of the Achaeans at that time had great influence with the Romans; nevertheless, it was decreed that no change should be made in the status of the Lacedaemonians.3 The reply, however, was so ambiguous that both the Achaeans accepted it as a concession of freedom of action regarding Lacedaemon and the [p. 109]Lacedaemonians interpreted it as not granting the Achaeans full4 authority.
[10]
This power the Achaeans employed unrestrainedly and tyrannically. Philopoemen was re-elected to the chief magistracy.5
1 This must be the winter of 189-188 B.C. The details of the chronology are obscure, but the siege of Same must have lasted well into the autumn.
2 B.C. 189
3 The senate probably intended that the Lacedaemonians should remain members of the Achaean League and that their surrender to Fulvius should be ignored. It seems a fair inference that the Achaeans were not to interfere, as Philopoemen proposed to do, in local Spartan affairs. But Roman fondness for sententiousness in legislation made this decree unpardonably vague, considering the gravity of the situation, and one is tempted to conclude that the senate did not really grasp the arguments and was not greatly interested.
4 B.C. 189
5 Elections were normally held in the autumn, and Philopoemen may have been chosen for his sixth term before the embassy to Rome.
Livy. Books XXXVIII-XXXIX with an English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1936: published without copyright notice.
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